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Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Monday Poetry Stretch - Like LEMONADE or Lawson

Okay, I know it's Tuesday (and late on Tuesday), but classes started yesterday and I got a bit behind. Please forgive me!

I have been reading and rereading Bob Raczka's book LEMONADE: AND OTHER POEMS SQUEEZED FROM A SINGLE WORD. I'm really impressed by the way he used each word to provide the constraints for the lipogram he wrote. The letters from each word are the only letters allowed in the poem ABOUT that word. It's elegant and probably very difficult to pull off, but we're going to try! For a bit of inspiration, here's one of my favorite poems from the book.

bleachers

ball

reaches

here

bases

clear

cheers

So, there's your challenge for the week. Pick a word, any word, and use the letters in it to write a poem about that word. Leave me a note about your poem and I'll share the results later this week.

**Updated**
I was thinking a bit about Jane's comment that this exercise if more like Boggle than poetry. It's not a bad comparison given the constraints. If you need a little more wiggle room, try the form of lipogram favored by JonArno Lawson in A VOWELLER'S BESTIARY. This alphabet book is based on vowel combiations rather than initial letters. The lipograms in this book exclude certain vowels from each set and include each of the vowels in the word. Here's an example.

In this case, the poet is limited only to vowels and vowel combinations, not limited to using only the letters found in the word. Feel free to try this approach if it works for you. Either way, i guess we're writing lipograms!

Julie--either you or I didn't understand the instruction. I think one is supposed to ONLY use the letters of the title word for the words in the rest of the poem. Which is why it seemed to me to be a super game of boggle and not really poetry.

I added a bit more information to the post and a variation based on the work of JonArno Lawson. The challenge is still to write a lipogram, but the second form may feel more poetic and less like wordplay.

Boy, did I get that wrong—but that’s what happens when you gloss over instructions! So I’ve read a little more and decided my ‘poem’ is a lipogram on the letter ‘u.’ Not such a great feat, but, hey, at least I know what a lipogram is now… or do I?

Oh Kenn, you've put us all to shame! I do believe you have a rhyming dictionary in your head! I tried the word skateboard, but couldn't make it work. i didn't think to add -ing. I'll need to ponder this some more!

For those of you struggling, I'll admit that I'm using a Scrabble word generator to help me. The one I use is at:http://www.wineverygame.com/

For what it's worth, it seems that the longer your title word is, the easier it gets, as you have more letters to choose from. Shorter words make it very tough. Choosing a word with common letters like T, E, R, and S helps too.

Anagram generators like wineverygame.com and anagrammer.com are helpful, but you can also use words that contain multiple copies of the same letter. So, for example, in the poem above, "rising," "grinding," and "risking" would not appear because they have two i's, and "grabbing" wouldn't show up because of the two b's.

No! Don't sit out, Kenn! I'm so inspired when people rise to these challenges. Keep them coming!

As to your keen observation about the Scrabble helper, I've been cheating and putting in doubles of letters so I get extra words. While I do love to play word games, coming up with all the possibilities is a bit overwhelming, so I'm enjoying a bit of help.

I was thinking Wow when I read your post, and I'm not sure I even understand how the second version works - I need to restudy it in the light of day (it's 1.00 here in the UK - WHAT am I doing?!?) - but having read all the amazing compositions in the comments I am truly blown away. Thank you, everyone!

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